the recently dead and the
long since dead. In the literary world, and in the world of art, both
yet live; and the author of the Life has this advantage, that thousands
read the "Family Library," whilst but few, comparatively speaking, make
themselves acquainted with Sir Joshua Reynolds and his works. We revere
this founder of our English school, and feel it due to the art we love,
to condemn the ungenerous and sarcastic spirit of The Life, by Allan
Cunningham. And if the dead could have any interest in and guidance of
things on earth, we can imagine no work that would be more pleasing to
them, than the removal of even the slightest evils they may have
inflicted; thus making restitution for them. It is very evident
throughout the "Lives," that the author has a prejudice against, an
absolute dislike to, Sir Joshua Reynolds. We stay not to account for it.
There are men of some opinions who, whether from pride, or other
feeling, have an antipathy to courtly manners, and what is called higher
society: jealous and suspicious lest they should not owe, and seen to
owe, every thing to themselves, there is a constant and irritable desire
to set aside, with a feigned, oftener than a real, contempt, the
influence and the homage the world pays to superiority of rank, station,
and education. They would wish to have nothing above themselves. How far
such may have been the case with the writer of the "Lives," we know not,
totally unacquainted as we have ever been, but by his writings. In them
there appears very strongly marked this vulgar feeling. He has stepped
out of his way in other lives, such as those of Wilson and Gainsborough,
to attack Sir Joshua by surmises and insinuations of meanness, blurring
the fair character of his best acts. The generous doings of the
President were too notorious not to be admitted, but generally a
sinister or selfish motive is insinuated. His courtesy was unpleasing,
while extreme coarseness met with a ready apologist. In the several
Lives of Sir Joshua Reynolds, there does not appear the slightest ground
upon which to found a charge of meanness of character: it is
inconceivable how such should have ever been insinuated, while
Northcote's "Life" of him was in existence, and Northcote must have
known him well. He was most liberal in expenditure, as became his
station, and the dignity which he was ambitiously desirous of conferring
upon the art over which he presided. To artists and others in their
distr